Xiaomi stunned the whole world when it unveiled the Mi MIX in 2016, featuring a bezel-less screen and a bone-conducting speaker. In the succeeding years, the company refined the Mi MIX concept and released three revisions. Last year, it unveiled the Mi MIX Alpha, its first significant new smartphone design, featuring a wraparound display. Now, a new patent from Xiaomi has leaked, showcasing a bonkers smartphone with a completely wraparound display.

The new Xiaomi smartphone patent that was recently unveiled shows a phone that has a display on the whole front and more than half of the rear. However, if you look closely, it’s not a single display that wraps around the phone’s body. It looks like Xiaomi has used to screens that bend towards the edges of the device. This is a more cost-friendly and practical approach, unlike the Mi MIX Alpha.

The leftover area that’s not covered by the screen is consumed by a large camera sensor that is paired with an extendable lens. It’s a 108MP camera from Samsung, similar to the Mi MIX Alpha and the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Since there’s no front-facing camera (unless there’s an under-display camera that we can’t see in the images), the rear-camera could double up as a selfie camera, and the rear-facing screen can be used to capture selfies.

The rear-facing screen can also be used to view notifications and other information when the phone is facing down on the front-facing screen. It looks like the phone uses a metal body, as most other high-end smartphones do. Another image of the phone that shows the cameras up close also displays ‘Designed By Xiaomi,’ ‘AI GPU,’ ‘5G Modem’, ‘MIUI,’ and ‘Mi AI Selfie Camera’ tags under the phone’s see-through rear panel.

The phone also seems to have a loudspeaker, microphone, and a USB Type-C port at the bottom. At the top, the device appears to feature a SIM card slot and a secondary microphone. For a patent, the device’s images seem pretty detailed, which might suggest that it is closer to the launch. However, it’s Xiaomi we’re talking about, and we might never see the phone released to purchase even if it gets officially unveiled.

Our Take

Xiaomi has a habit of showcasing jaw-dropping smartphone designs and not actually releasing those devices. This patent looks like one of those devices. Plus, to us, a smartphone with an inward foldable display seems more practical than having a screen on both sides of the device. You only end up using one side of the phone, so the additional real estate goes unused most of the time.

What do you think of the new smartphone design patent from Xiaomi?